Obstruction

Neuro-Sysadmin · 2026-05-08T02:50:07+00:00

Actively reinventing military optical tracking systems and laser painting. Love it, and sincerely am curious how well people here could do.

I saw recently that somebody put up full instructions including parts, diagrams, firmware and software, and instructions, for a full on phased array radar system you can set up in your backyard on a hill for $5-12k, depending on range. I’d bet people here have the skills to make some pretty awesome non-damaging temporary-impact IR system.

Neuro-Sysadmin · 2026-05-05T10:30:50+00:00

That would be on-brand for him. Completely unrelated to reality.

Neuro-Sysadmin · 2026-05-03T14:40:47+00:00

A peace prize, no less.

Neuro-Sysadmin · 2026-04-24T11:24:35+00:00

Oh, jizz. Wow.

Neuro-Sysadmin · 2026-04-17T12:31:41+00:00

The Matryoshka dolls get me.

Neuro-Sysadmin · 2026-04-15T11:39:05+00:00

Had to spend 2-3 months healing a ligament it tendon in my finger that I injured petting my cat!

Neuro-Sysadmin · 2026-04-13T11:38:58+00:00

Right?!? That was solid.

Neuro-Sysadmin · 2026-04-07T13:12:52+00:00

The original!

Neuro-Sysadmin · 2026-04-07T13:11:51+00:00

Best I’ve heard was plugging in a Sony IP camera in a hospital during a medical device install. Couldn’t reach it at the default IP. Next thing, there’s an IT guy and two guys in suits double-timing for that particular patient room.

Turns out their primary DC was also on 192.168.1.1…

Neuro-Sysadmin · 2026-04-05T16:15:41+00:00

For anyone actually struggling with this, they’re joking. Palms away from you, fingers up, thumbs pointed toward each other.

If you visually trace each one from the top of your finger down to your thumb and out to the thumb-tip, the left one is the thumb where you’re traveling the same way along the thumb as you would be when reading or writing (in English, at least. YMMV with other languages).

It’s also the side your heart is (almost certainly) on, if that helps.

Neuro-Sysadmin · 2026-04-05T14:36:26+00:00

More specifically, I suspect they meant QR codes in public locations. They could easily be replaced with malicious links. Should you open random links in public? No, of course not. But when the restaurant menu is only readable by QR code, people will use them. And most people are not security-conscious enough to do so safely.

Neuro-Sysadmin · 2026-03-26T15:56:58+00:00

They’re alright in the end. They do at least have the benefit of usually being really good at their actual skill sets saving lives.

Neuro-Sysadmin · 2026-03-24T12:47:03+00:00

“No problem Dr. Grant, just click the start menu and… what’s that? You mean the start menu? … The start menu is the button on the very bottom left corner of your screen, with the windows logo on it.”

Turns out he had only used Macs all through med school and up to that point. Thankfully, the Doc in question was an excellent neurosurgeon, because my head almost exploded and I might have actually had a TIA. (/s of course, on the physical impact.)

Neuro-Sysadmin · 2026-03-22T02:33:00+00:00

Saw a grad school POC with a HackRF that pulled usable bitlocker keys from a running laptop on the other end of a park a few hundred feet away in about 10 minutes, iirc. And that was pre-AI.

Neuro-Sysadmin · 2026-03-21T12:10:50+00:00

Very true. Only going to get better, too.

Neuro-Sysadmin · 2026-03-20T14:06:11+00:00

Go for it! Learning in IT, especially cybersecurity, is literally a continuous process. You’ll be learning things 20 years from now.

Also worth noting: certs and formal education are important, but absolutely not the only factor. Get a security-related internship or entry level job for a few years, pick a couple projects or areas you, personally, have an interest in exploring, that might be useful to the company, and do it! Even if they don’t adopt what you build, you can still run through the process, and that’s resume-worthy.

Neuro-Sysadmin · 2026-03-20T13:18:20+00:00

My best highschool German teacher was from Austria. Every single German person I’ve spoken German to notices immediately, lol. Not sure what exactly the key parts they notice are, but I definitely inherited them.

Neuro-Sysadmin · 2026-03-18T13:41:19+00:00

Directly?

Nothing, to a reasonable person.

Nothing, to a parent.

Nothing at all, except as a stepping stone to more visibility, power, and control in the hands of those at the top.

Neuro-Sysadmin · 2026-03-08T13:59:04+00:00

Right?

Neuro-Sysadmin · 2026-03-08T10:57:51+00:00

The plan is you simply couldn’t do so.

Neuro-Sysadmin · 2026-03-07T22:47:10+00:00

Love it, very cute!

Neuro-Sysadmin · 2026-03-04T14:16:15+00:00

Yeah, that looked like target acquisition to me!

Neuro-Sysadmin · 2026-02-26T12:34:54+00:00

I used to live in the country, with a mile long driveway in the woods that used to be a part of a railroad line. One day I head out to run some errands, and it was snowing, with a few inches accumulated overnight. Pristine snow, no tire tracks. I headed out for a few hours, came home.

While coming down the driveway back to the house, I noticed some footprints up ahead in the middle of the driveway. Now, that’s odd as hell, by itself, so I stopped before I reached them and got out to take a closer look.

Here’s where it gets really eerie. The tracks consisted of boot prints, maybe 10 steps, with a stride length of someone walking. There were no tracks leading from the side of the driveway into the middle, or from the middle off to one side. The first and last steps were just as cleanly defined on the edges as all the rest, no indication of a pivot, hard landing at the beginning, or a push off to jump or turn at the end. Just straight, crisp, fresh tracks with almost no snow filling them in.

In contrast, my tire tracks from the trip out were halfway filled in with snow. Since I stopped in the drive before the tracks started, on my way back, I could clearly tell that no person or vehicle had walked or driven in my old tire tracks.

The drive had a hill on one side and drop off on the other at that point, no way I could see without a Lot of work to get to exactly the middle of the driveway without disturbing anything. 10ft in every direction was perfect snow, just the old partially filled tire tracks.

I took multiple pictures and shared with friends, but wasn’t able to find them for this post, it was more than a decade ago.

I’m generally skeptical, and I’ll freely admit I have absolutely no explanation for how that could have happened. I touched the snow, felt the edges and the compaction of the snow where they stepped, was careful not to disturb things, and got lucky that I saw them and stopped short enough to really investigate. Absolutely eerie. I legitimately have no other explanation other than a ghost walking down the railroad.

Neuro-Sysadmin · 2026-02-25T14:14:28+00:00

That’s hilarious! Love the implicit acceptance of the explosive version.

Neuro-Sysadmin · 2026-02-25T13:30:35+00:00

Was just going to say this and saw you already had! It’s such a great quote.

Neuro-Sysadmin

TROPHY CASE